Abstract
Through quantitative analysis, I describe in this paper the process by which women's social status is reproduced in contemporary Japanese society.
A review of the literature indicates that for female respondents in the analysis, it is necessary to measure individual status separately from household status. Thus, in this paper, I measured both aspects of status and then analyzed the effects of family background on each of them. First, each respondent's individual status was quantified using her individual income; household status (i. e., standard of living) was quantified by household income, and family background was categorized on the basis of both her father's and mother's occupations. Then, the reproduction of the respondents' social status via family background was considered.
Using the 2005 Japanese SSM survey for the analysis, I found that women's family background generally fell into one of four groups: (1) those whose parents both had high occupational status, (2) those whose fathers held white-collar jobs and mothers worked as homemakers, (3) those with at least one parent who was a farmer, and (4) those whose fathers held blue-collar jobs.
Moreover, I found that the two aspects of social status are differently influenced by family background. For example, women whose parents both had high occupational status generally attain higher individual status (respondents' income) , while women who were raised by white-collar-job fathers and homemaker mothers generally attain a higher household status (household income) than the other groups.
Considering both aspects of social status, it appears that the process by which women are differentially influenced by their parents' occupations is uniquely complex.
